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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78281 ***
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                        Four-Billion Dollar Door
+
+                           by Michael Shaara
+
+
+  _Old Sam Button devoted his life to being the first man on the
+  Moon--in one way, he was._
+
+
+
+
+I see, by the latest history books my boy brings home from school, that
+they are already beginning to rewrite the incredible tale of Sam Button
+and the door. And I can see their point. Sam Button was a great hero,
+first man to reach the Moon and all that, and it was a rare moment in
+history when he made it.
+
+But still, they haven’t got any right to hush up about the door.
+Because, even if that was one of the great moments in history, it was
+also undoubtedly one of the funniest. Anything that funny ought to be
+handed on to posterity. So, since nobody else had taken on the chore I
+guess I’ll have to take it on myself.
+
+Old Sam Button was a long lean man with blonde hair that looked like it
+had been stuck on with glue. Old Sam was a rare man, as well as a lean
+one. For as far back as I can remember, Old Sam lived with one great
+dream, to get from Earth to the Moon. There are a lot of people like
+that nowadays, but there weren’t so many then.
+
+We used to kid him about it. “Old Onward and Upward Button”, we used
+to call him, and it was a standing joke that his mother had been
+frightened by a flying saucer.
+
+Kidding never stopped Old Sam--not even when he was Young Sam. He knew
+exactly where he was going. He kept at it all through school, up to a
+Ph.D. in physics, and then went right to work on guided missiles. He
+planned it from the very beginning, so that, when the chance came, he
+would be ready. When it finally came, Old Sam was readier than any man
+in the country. Which shows you what a deeply dedicated man he was. It
+also makes it kind of peculiar that such a comedy finish should finally
+wind up his dream.
+
+Old Sam had faith every step of the way--I mean faith in science. He
+was absolutely certain men would get to the Moon, and Mars, and all the
+other places, and he was pretty sure that most of it would be within
+his lifetime. So he traveled around the country, making speeches.
+
+In his spare time, Old Sam wrote science articles, speculating on the
+amazing things we would find when we got wherever we were going. I
+guess he had more to do with the first big rocket being built than any
+man in the country. It cost four billion dollars, you see, which even
+now will go a good long way in the right hands, and Congress naturally
+had to be practically dynamited before they’d hand it over.
+
+But Old Sam never gave up. He bribed them, he warned them, he sweetened
+them, he promised them everything. He claimed that the Moon was an
+invaluable military base, that whoever got there first would rule
+the world, that the scientific information we would receive would be
+enormous. He even hinted seriously that there might be loose diamonds,
+lying around on the Moon’s surface--caused, he said, by meteors
+striking rock with great speed and pressure.
+
+He promised them, in short, the Moon--and, in the end, he got the money.
+
+I have never heard a more eloquent speaker. The only time I ever saw
+him stumped was when one Senator, an amiable, earthy man from Missouri,
+commented that, “If the good Lord had meant us to get to the Moon,
+why’d he make it so dagnab fur away?”
+
+“But science,” Old Sam declared, “science would find a way.” There were
+a lot more atoms in the world than there were people, and, as far as
+Sam was concerned, what the atoms did was more important.
+
+Now, perhaps, you begin to know a little about Old Sam. True, he was
+not exactly a likeable man. Dedicated men like that seldom are. But I
+guess Old Sam really went a mite too far. After spending a lot of his
+lifetime in a laboratory, he was certainly a one-sided man. If a thing
+wasn’t done scientifically, it wasn’t done at all, for Sam.
+
+Fortunately, he had no children. If he had had kids, he was the kind
+of man who would have spared the love and spoiled the child. All his
+emotional interest was bound up in space flight. Which, considering
+what happened, must have made subsequent events really rough on him.
+
+At any rate, he got his money and built the satellite station _and_ the
+space-ship. They were four years in the building, and then, one July,
+he took off for the Moon.
+
+I don’t suppose there was a man on Earth who didn’t know about Old
+Sam’s trip, and there were very few people who weren’t excited about
+Man’s first step into space. It was a great moment, a dramatic moment.
+There were television cameras mounted on Old Sam’s ship beaming it
+all back to Earth. At least fifty million people were following Old
+Explorer Sam and his crew on their spectacular journey.
+
+So, one morning, as Sam finally began to maneuver for the Lunar
+landing, he was already a monumental hero. Newspaper reporters all
+over the world had been busy for months, writing about the hazards of
+the trip, about the deathly cold of outer space, about collisions with
+mountainous meteors and cosmic death rays.
+
+But Old Sam had merely sniffed smugly for the cameras. “Everything
+has been considered,” he reassured the press, “we have foreseen every
+detail.”
+
+So the papers painted him as a vast man, calm, unworried, going off
+into the illimitable dark, on the greatest of all explorations. No
+doubt, Old Sam _was_ a great man--in his way.
+
+All eyes were on him, as he went in for Man’s first landing on the
+Moon. The TV cameras were focussed upon him, as he gave the orders for
+the landing, standing proud and triumphant in a spotless white cap and
+gilded uniform. There was a great bump, the picture leaped and blurred
+for a moment, while fifty million breaths were held, and then you could
+almost hear the cheers rising up from all over Earth. The Moonship was
+finally down--down and safe. What a moment!
+
+Old Sam took off his hat and made a little speech. “Men and women
+of Earth,” he said simply, “we have reached the Moon.” It was very
+impressive--it was about as impressive a moment as I have ever seen.
+Then Old Sam stepped toward the door.
+
+Naturally, the next moves had all been carefully rehearsed. He was to
+don his uniform, a thick rubberized affair with a fishbowl helmet, then
+he was to step out of the airlock of the great steel ship, bearing a
+flag in his hand.
+
+Then he was to plant the flag in the soil of the Moon, and the
+television cameras were to be brought outside the ship, and we were all
+to get our first look at the Moon, while he made the speech claiming
+it. So we all watched breathlessly, while he got into his helmet.
+
+At last, Old Sam went to the airlock, turned once to wave at the
+cameras, and pushed a button. The door didn’t open.
+
+There was a seemingly endless pause, and then, still calm, he pushed
+the button again.
+
+The door still didn’t open.
+
+He pushed several times, then motioned to one of the crew. You could
+hear people begin giggling nervously. The crewman examined the lock
+with bewilderment, then mumbled something to Sam.
+
+“What do you mean, frozen?” Old Sam cried, and the question must have
+been audible all over the world. Then he pushed feverishly at the
+button. But the great steel door wouldn’t open.
+
+It was all very embarrassing. Having reached the Moon safely, they
+couldn’t get out of the ship. The ship of course was built of solid
+steel, fully pressurized, and there was simply no exit. They had
+spanned two hundred and forty thousand miles of space, had spent four
+billion dollars and they couldn’t get out of the ship! No flag, no
+speeches, no scientific information--no diamonds! They couldn’t get out
+of the ship!
+
+The door was frozen shut. Moments later--some of the most wildly
+hysterical moments in history--Old Sam announced unbelievingly to fifty
+million people that he had discovered the reason. Some mechanic, back
+on Earth, had greased the outside of the door. In outer space, the
+grease had frozen rock-solid. There was no possible way of opening the
+door.
+
+I must say, to Old Sam’s credit, that he didn’t break down. He waited,
+at least, until the cameras were off him. Then all we saw was a
+frigidly smiling announcer, trying to point out that Man had after all
+reached the Moon. But you could feel the shock rising all over the
+world--and then the laughter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mankind guffawed from pole to pole. Practically everybody enjoyed it
+but Congress. Some hothead introduced a resolution banning spaceflight
+forever. There was nothing for Old Sam to do, but to bring the ship
+back to Earth. It would be understandable if he had committed suicide
+on the way. He came back to what must have been the worst ribbing in
+history. I guess, deep down, we were all a little embarrassed, and we
+had to take it out on somebody.
+
+Well that’s about all there is. What Old Sam did thereafter is obscure.
+When the laughter finally died down, and space travel was revived,
+he had no part in it. For he died, about that time, of a stroke of
+apoplexy, brought on one day at a picnic with his wife.
+
+It seems she had forgotten the can opener.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note:
+
+
+  This etext was produced from Satellite Science Fiction December 1956
+  (vol. 1, no. 2). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+  the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
+  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78281 ***